Hussein Chalayan Spring 2011 Review

Hussein Chalayan is no neophyte when it comes to fashion on film, or film involving fashion, or using moviemaking as a tool of personal expression—whatever it is, Chalayan, an enthusiast of harnessing all kinds of technologies, was one of the first to experiment with it. YouTube is full of his art-video work and performance-based shows, which, even after more than ten years, still look undated—and maybe even more incredible when their meanings can be mulled over again and again. People love them.

So now that practically everyone is putting out a fashion film—and many are speculating that it’ll be the death of the traditional show—it’s no giant stretch that Chalayan has a movie sequel for spring 2011. In fact, with Sakoku, his Japanese-inspired collection (the title refers to Japan’s period of isolation between 1633 and 1853), he’s reached a point of clarity and balance between clothes and communication ahead of many others. Chalayan has figured out how to have it all ways now. His movie, premiered here on Vogue.com, shows a sequence of clothes on the same model. At the same time, he is projecting it on the wall of a gallery showroom in Paris, a tranquil space where he has the clothes ranged around the walls, and is inviting writers and editors in to talk to him in person, one on one. The chance to have that human contact is vital to Chalayan, and vice versa for editors (many of whom have spent Fashion Week so far struggling, as usual, to get backstage to get a sound bite from the likes of Lanvin and Haider Ackermann, only to be body-blocked by Janet Jackson’s security).

So: The idea, he explained, is about old Japan and its traditional artistic rituals, but not literally. “I’ve read and researched a lot, but then I’ve created my own theories.” The key to interpreting the mysterious aspect of the movie: the faces covered with black cloths at the beginning—a symbol of the sakoku isolation—and the hooded men wafting the hemline of a silk flower-printed dress toward the end, an allusion to Japanese theatre.

But, as you can clearly see by clicking on the video, that does not obscure the view of his appealing clothes. The moving image efficiently displays the way peplumed shirts and super-full-skirted dresses (dozens of godets from a pattern he pioneered in 1998, the year he looks back on as a creative defining moment) flare and bounce, sometimes breaking out from overlays of elongated black jackets and vests with slits in the sides. It also does poetic justice to the floating panels of a pale evening column, and the pretty, flower-sprigged chiffon dress whose skirts those black-clad men are busy flapping around—and Chalayan’s unique touch when it comes to cutting an interesting, pristine white shirt.

Often the impression is that many designers would really rather disappear behind the screen than have to go out into the terrifying gladiatorial ring that is the traditional runway show and wait for a thumbs-up or -down from the fashion rabble. Chalayan isn’t really one of those, because he is also a master of fashion as performance, and he will doubtless go back to a live show at some point. It’s just that these days, designers are increasingly able to make choices about when, where, and how to express what they’re doing. And Hussein Chalayan, this season, is one of the designers who synthesized his message—movie, mass communication, and lovely, understandable clothes—in a serenely effective way.